Journal 2000

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1 January 2000, Dragonfly Place in the Siskiyou Mountains of southern Oregon....

The new year crept quietly in at Dragonfly Place. Just before dawn, lights blaze in communities down the Rogue Valley, and stars blaze in the winter sky. In the faint light, I watch deer browse across the meadow below my home as they often do. Mister Jackrabbit coolly hops past last week's cougar tracks. A new fire in the stove welcomes the day with warmth. This seems a good time to contemplate what's been and what's to be by being here ... perhaps imagining the flicker of a new story to carry with me into next week's school storytellings.

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5 February 2000, Dragonfly Place in the Siskiyou Mountains of southern Oregon....

The Chinese New Year of the Dragon swooped onto Dragonfly Place this morning with wind that whipped clouds down the Siskiyous, bringing warm, misty rain that made one believe that spring is just around the bend. I have heard that daffodils are blooming on the coast, and as I have sauntered around the Rogue Valley this past week, I have seen new buds on trees. As for what Mister Groundhog may or may not have seen a couple of days ago -- well, that was in Pennsylvania, wasn't it? This upcoming Dragon year of "good luck and prosperity" is my birth year and I look forward to what the days ahead may plop down on my path.

In Chinese horoscopes, Dragon people are described as "idealists and perfectionists. They are born thinking they are perfect and they are inflexible. Dragons can be irritable and stubborn. They have real big mouths and their words often outrun their thoughts. Nevertheless, their opinions are worth listening to and their advice is always good. People do, in fact, listen to them and their influence is considerable. Dragons are dauntless, dynamic and delightful. When a Dragon enters a gathering, the room starts to simmer. The Dragon carries a self-assurance so impressive, and inflated ego so visible and a mouth so loud that it is useless to try to tell him anything."

Hmmmmm.... This certainly doesn't describe me! hehe.... "Me either!" says Coyote.

Continuing.... "The Dragon is gifted, intelligent, tenacious, willing and generous. He can do anything. No matter whether the Dragon chooses an artistic career, medical or political one, he is going to shine in it. He will be a success wherever he goes. The Dragon is often loved. He is never disappointed in love. In fact, he is frequently the cause of some drama of despair."

"Now that's better!" chimes Coyote.

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5 March 2000, Dragonfly Place in the snowy Siskiyou Mountains of southern Oregon....

Even after the daffodils and fruit trees brought spring colors to Southern Oregon, the snow slipped back in last evening. By morning, after a night of being wrapped in a breezy white storm cloud, there is nearly 6 inches of new snow at Dragonfly Place. Very pretty. The juncos and their buddies are happy for the full bird feeder, and my bones are happy for the blazing fire in the stove.

These past few days found me sauntering down the Klamath River into Bigfoot Country, sharing stories on the Yurok Reservation. Below where the Trinity River flows into the Klamath, and during these spring run-off days, the Klamath River is huge, green and swirling, and creeks tumble down the steep mountainsides with the roar and look of waterfalls. With the mountain peaks swirling with morning mist and fog, this was a perfect setting for stories ... mysterious and mythic....

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10 April 2000, Dragonfly Place in the Siskiyou Mountains of southern Oregon....

It's been a wonderful day here in the mountains, a sunny spring day brimming with the yellows and reds and blues of wildflowers blooming in the meadows and in sunlit patches in the forest, and with the drone of bees, the chirping of junkos and chickadees, and the humorous ways of jays. A herd of four deer -- two of them new faces! -- have spent from last evening to now browsing the hillside. I spent the day scribbling and tidying up the winter heap of firewood. We Oregon folks are as seasonal as they come. The seasons are distinct here, constant, cyclical reminders of change. Each spring I'm ready to be done with firewood, and each fall I can't wait to feed the stove and sit in the warmth of firelight, waiting for the first snow to drift in.

These past several days I have been sauntering. I love to saunter, and this time I drove out of Portland after visits with friends and family, and around Mount Hood and into the high desert of Central Oregon. I had a wonderful visit with Scratchy, chatting late into the night about the sometimes-apparent, often-elusive symbols of the rocks. Next morning I wandered through the varied landscapes of John Day Fossil Beds ... the rich reds and greens and blacks of Painted Hills, a wetland surrounded by sage and juniper, a steep climb into the ridgetop backcountry of Blue Basin, the John Day River winding slow and lazy in the valley below. A night in The Dalles, that wild west pioneer pot boiling with history and stories, and back down the Columbia River toward a slow wandering through Willamette Valley wildlife refuges, and home.

And here I am, happy to be home, sitting on the deck and waiting for the stars.

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29 April 2000, Dragonfly Place in the Siskiyou Mountains of southern Oregon....

Here in the mountains, the spring days have been spectacular, shifting back and forth between rain and snow, sun and clouds, nights brilliant with stars and those breezy starless nights that whisper the beginnings of a new mountain storm blowing in. Spring is enjoying her dramatic in-the-moment performance!

The jackrabbits are back at Dragonfly Place. Haven't seen them since neighbors reported cougars in the area last winter. Hmmmmm... Nice to see the rabbits back, hopping around in pairs which makes it convenient for them to embrace their favorite springtime appetite.

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11 May 2000, Cornelius Pass....

Today begins my 20th year of sharing stories. It seems appropriate that with all those years of wandering the West that I should scribble this while on the road, on Cornelius Pass just outside of springtime-soggy, sometimes-sunny Portland.

Looking back, it's been a wonderful journey ... some 7000 or so programs which have included performances, workshops, residencies, literary readings, story tours, and on and on.... Coyote and I have left a lot of tracks. But the memories don't live on in the show-business glitz or in day to day business stuff, but rather in the meeting of incredible folks along the way, listening to their stories and exploring the landscapes they call home. Those experiences can be pretty much summed up in this question from a 5 year old boy following a storytelling in Merlin, Oregon: "How do you keep the pictures rolling in your head?" My answer: "I listen to the words and I look to see what I can find between the words." He nodded. I nodded. We both knew what the other meant. Here was a brief moment of shared truth.

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8 June 2000, Dragonfly Place in the Siskiyou Mountains of southern Oregon....

The school-year school programs are done, and Coyote and I are back home in our mountain lair after a fine fall-to-spring season of stories. Summer is lurking near this Siskiyou ridge. Early spring wildflowers have taken up residence higher up the slopes, the field in front of Dragonfly Place is changing from brilliant green to more summery brown, and herds of deer and other critters wander through here nightly on their way to the sweeter, newer grasses of high-elevation alpine meadows. This place is in constant transition. Naming only four seasons seems to fall short of the day to day subtle changes in colors and textures of sky, of forest meadows, of groves of pines and firs and cedars.

I took a little trek over Memorial Day weekend. I sauntered over the Cascades and into the high desert. First night out I camped at the base of a small cinder cone on the slopes of the Medicine Lake Volcano, a short distance upslope from the cave called Coyote's Cupboard. Sunset washed the sky with slow-changing textures of colors ... rosy-peach to yellow to gold to orange to brilliant red ... and then a sky brilliant with stars as they shine only in the desert. Between the sunset and the deep darkness of night, in the twilight flickering of my campfire, two Western Tanagers came to visit. They flitted and sang through the shadows of the trees on the edge of camp for an hour, fluttering yellow and orange as if they had flown out to catch the brightest of the sunset colors and brought them to our camp. After a quiet night of dreams and forest rustlings, I traveled on into the Great Basin and eventually to some of my favorite rock writings in Central Oregon, spending time in those wondrous places the stories come from.

Back home now, I'm spending my days scribbling new words and watching the heat of summer sneak nearer and nearer.

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28 June 2000, Dragonfly Place in the Siskiyou Mountains of southern Oregon....

The dragonflies have returned home to Dragonfly Place. There are a few which hang out here much of the year, but come mid-June or so, they arrive in clouds that buzz with their wings, much to the evening delight of neighborhood bats. They fly in with the hot days of summer about the same time tourists flock to Ashland. The tourists come here for quality theatre -- the dragonflies create their own theatre -- and both enjoy the summery Siskiyou mountain air.

The summer solstice found me meeting the Desert Ranger gang in the area of Picture Rock Pass in Central Oregon. For the past few summers, we have been photographing and interpreting a pictograph that marks the first days of summer. This solstice arrived with clear skies and blazing high desert heat. Perfect.

Last Sunday I had the honor of sharing a story at Buckhorn Springs at a picnic celebrating the establishment of the new national monument in the Soda Mountain area of southern Oregon. For several years I worked on various projects in an effort to establish protection for this area, and finally the protection has come. This was an incredible coming together of amazing folks -- indeed, a gathering of eagles! My story, "The Wind," brought the gathering to an end.

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15 July 2000, Dragonfly Place in the Siskiyou Mountains of southern Oregon....

Just back from a saunter through the wild lands of Oregon, Nevada and California. Someone has got to keep an eye on things out there, and so we did. Along with good-bad-dog Coyote and Bear and various other alter-ego-type mythic characters, I crowded into the rig with camping gear and grub and lots of water, and trekked across deserts and mountains, mostly in the traditional homeland of the Northern Paiutes.

We traveled from Ashland to Klamath Marsh to Silver Lake to Fort Rock to Burns. We explored Malheur National Wildlife Refuge from a base in the historic Frenchglen Hotel, visiting ponds and creeks, meadows and rough volcanic lands, and the sites of stories etched in stone by the distant ancestors of the Paiutes. From Malheur we climbed to the summit of Steens Mountain, and down into the Alvord Desert to Fields Station. Here we imbibed in traditional traveler faire (also ceremoniously consumed by the locals): milkshakes!

We turned south into the heart of the Sheldon Antelope Range in northern Nevada. Under a near-full moon, we camped along a lakeshore near Catnip Springs. In the long shadows of evening, we were visited by Coyote's leaner and less urban cousins, a pair of sandhill cranes, a herd of pronghorn, and ducks and geese and sage grouse and dozens of flittering, singing birds -- a long, diverse list. We were treated to an occasional appearance by a slender, green snake who made his home in an old brick oven. He sneaked curious cold-eyed peeks at us out of various cracks in the mortar.

With the first stars came the buzzing of nighthawks swooping for insects, and other night sounds that can only be described as the raw material for stories.

Early in the morning, coyotes sang the sky full of brilliant colors ... orange, flaming red, softer peach.... In the first hot rays of the summer sun, herds of wild horses and burros clattered down from the rimrock in a cloud of desert dust to graze and drink along the shore.

We had arrived in the late afternoon the day before, and it wasn't until driving out later in the morning that we came across another person: a lone refuge worker with the lonely job of road-grading the seemingly endless miles of rock and dust, from the refuge headquarters to the jeep trails past Last Chance Ranch, and into the starkly-beautiful hinterlands between Cedarville and Adel.

We bumped along outback roads into Cedarville. This is a Great Basin community of friendly folks made interesting by their love of the incredible landscape they call home, by generations of tight-knit families and friendships, and by a more than average number of dramatic UFO sightings ... a town full of amazing stories.... From there we journeyed home by way of the Pit River country, Lava Beds National Monument, the Klamath Basin and finally over the Cascade Mountains with their familiar sights and smells, and into the Siskiyous.

Things are doing well out there. Well, mostly. Thought we'd have a look. Never have I felt more in the middle of somewhere....

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3 September 2000, Dragonfly Place in the Siskiyou Mountains of southern Oregon....

Last night, on a cool evening that felt more like fall than summer, I did my last outdoor performance of the summer season at Lost Creek Lake. It rained before, and it rained afterwards, but somehow we got lucky and were spared any kind of drizzle during the stories. As darkness fell on the Cascades, I kept pulling up myths that brimmed with images of sunlight as if I wasn't quite ready to let go of the long summer days that are so kind, and filled with sun and warmth. As the Inuit song says, "There is only one great thing, the only thing: to live to see the great day that dawns, and the light that fills the world."

I am back home at Dragonfly Place after more than a week in Portland securing gigs for this fall and beyond. I came home to rain and brisk mountain air, and a scolding by my feathered friends over the near-emptiness of the bird feeder. This was to make a point, I understand, not an act of desperation. The jays, of course, cursed the loudest. The feeder still had a half inch of seed and it would be difficult for any critter, bird or otherwise, to starve at this time of year in the Siskiyous, when berries and nuts and other natural goodies are so bountiful. I hear you, Mister Jay, but next time don't complain about the lack of food as you stuff your silly beak with acorns.

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1 October 2000, Dragonfly Place in the Siskiyou Mountains of southern Oregon....

Indian summer has settled onto the mountain ridge at Dragonfly Place. With the cooler nights, the firewood stack is beginning to look inviting. But warm days tug me back into the kindness of summer sunshine. For me, autumn is filled with memories and longings of every other season. The busyness of squirrels and jays in their almost-frantic efforts to store up food for the coming winter, dramatizes transition. Sometimes, late at night, I hear migrating Canada geese. Invisible in the darkness, I listen to their honking and imagine them among the stars, following the nightly migration of constellations. The fall breeze whispers to me: We are somewhere, heading somewhere else.... A dry leaf shakes, and floats to the ground.

This seasonal shift begins a new season of stories. School and community storytelling tours begin soon, and mid-month is my annual residency at Phoenix Elementary School. As I saunter from gig to gig through the autumn landscape, I'll make a few last visits to favorite places before wintery snowfalls close roads and trails ... Medicine Lake, Boundary Springs, Coyote's Cupboard....

For a few more days, though, I am at home in my Siskiyou lair, scribbling my new play, adding new stories to my bag of tales, and enjoying the scampering of critters through daily shifts of color and light.

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26 October 2000, Dragonfly Place in the Siskiyou Mountains of southern Oregon....

Last Friday I finished a week-long storytelling residency at Phoenix Elementary School in Phoenix, Oregon. I have been doing this annual residency for 15 years (or so!), and each one has been a joy.

The children and I journeyed together through several landscapes of storytelling. We began with the basic skills and tools a teller keeps in his satchel of tricks ... from breathing to voice, from gesture to movement, from control to grace.... We explored ideas and concepts. "The art of the storyteller is to serve the stories. To do this we get rid of the storyteller."

It didn't take long for students to gain enough skill to begin finding their own unique styles of telling. Once they discovered their voices through creating their own personal stories, their first journey into storytelling took on dimensions and depths that amazed us all. They performed their original stories solo in an evening program to the oohs and ahhs of astonished parents and siblings.

Throughout the residency, Coyote made himself known in various ways. Sometimes there's more than one Coyote in a classroom at the same time. But he behaved himself -- mostly -- and a wonderful, magical week was had by all.

Speaking of Coyote, he and I and all our story character buddies are sauntering down the Klamath River later today to Happy Camp, California for performances at Happy Camp Elementary School, in the heart of Karuk homeland. It should be a gorgeous trek. The aspens are at the height of their brilliant gold colors, and oaks and maples make every hillside blaze with fall.

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14 November 2000, Dragonfly Place in the Siskiyou Mountains of southern Oregon....

Last night, snow clouds drifted down the ridges and brought the first snow of the season to Dragonfly Place. All night the snow fell gently with first-time tentativness. By morning, a fluffy covering of four inches had transformed my mountain lair, and with it, the muffled quiet that spreads like pale winter light through the woods.

In the morning shadows, four deer browse through the clearing in front of my house. It is so quiet I can hear the snorts of the buck as he follows the does up the hill and into the trees. Mornings like this, my neighbor Mister Fox will have a tough time covering his tracks.

Morning light brings Juncos and Chickadees, Steller's Jays and Nuthatches and a Rufous-sided Towhee to the only good food not hiding under the snow: my bird feeder. I can read the story of their morning dance in the snowy tracks covering my deck.

To my feathered friends: May the silence of first snow settle in your soul like a good story.

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21 December 2000, Dragonfly Place in the Siskiyou Mountains of southern Oregon....

Solstice. The winter sun shines here in the mountains on this shortest day of the year, a pleasant nudge to remind me that more light is on the way. A flock of frisky robins arrived this morning, and have been spending the past hour having a rowdy time in the puddles in the driveway, to the amazement of resident chickadees and juncos who watch from their "safe" bush a few feet away.

Pines and firs shimmer in the sunlight, decorated with the jeweled raindrops of this morning's brief storm. It rained just enough to make vivid what few colors are out there on this first day of winter. Snow is quite a ways up the slope, a south wind warms the mountain air.... This "dark" day seems full of light.